Patrick McCully had a revelation in India more than a decade ago. The campaign director of International Rivers Network witnessed indigenous people in Gujarat state, India, risking their lives to protest construction of a dam on the Narmada River. All were eventually arrested, but government officials and engineers covered it up, claiming the case had been settled peacefully, he said.
This event in 1992 destroyed his faith in the aid policies of international organizations, politicians and industry, which he says are only looking out for themselves, and set him on a course of crusading against large-scale dam construction.
McCully, 37, will address several sessions of the World Water Forum, which began Sunday in Kyoto, Osaka and Shiga prefectures, as a representative of IRN, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization that works to halt destructive river development.